“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” - Aristotle

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Monday, January 28, 2013

Lydiard Based Running Wizard: How It All Began For Me

"There's no shortcut to the top..." ~ Arthur Lydiard

This story begins in May, 2012, when I attended an RRCA Coaching Certification Clinic in Denver. Now, there's lots and lots of running big-wigs residing along Colorado's front range, and I was lucky enough to be in class for 3 days with Lorraine Moller who was attending as a sort of expert in residence. Lorraine, originally from New Zealand, is a former runner with Aurthur Lydiard, Olympic Marathon bronze medalist in Barcelona (she ran in the first four women's Olympic marathons) and head of the Lydiard Foundation.

In class situations I'm pretty outspoken. I'm a college instructor, so I'm very comfortable debating and discussing contentious issues and theories. So there was a lot of debate going on during the class, and I found myself even questioning and challenging some of Lorraine's claims and assertions. But often I am more comfortable talking in groups than one on one. At the close of the course, I worked up the nerve to shyly introduce myself to Lorraine.

A month later I received an email from Lorraine inviting me to attend a Lydiard L1 & 2 Coach Certification Course being held in Boulder. I jumped at the chance to accept this fairly exclusive invitation.

And so began my relationship with Lorraine Moller and Aurthur Lydiard. I always found myself gravitating toward a Lydiard based system, but it wasn't really based on a solid grounding of what that meant except as it is often filtered through other coaches and the systems they develop, often incorporating aspect of Lydiard's principles. After taking the course and the exam, I realized that things are a lot more complicated than we often believe...and I still had a lot to (a lot I wanted/want to) learn about all of this.

After the New York City Marathon was cancelled, I floundered a bit. I had trained and tapered to race on November 4th. The soonest I could schedule a replacement marathon was December 9th in Tucson. Lorraine scheduled a get together for local Lydiard coaches about 3 weeks before I was to run Tucson. It was on a Friday, and I had every intention of doing a last 23 mile training run the next morning. I hadn't run a "long" run since pacing in Chicago in early October, so I felt I needed just one more before Tucson. I bounced this idea off of Lorraine.

Her response, "No. I don't want you running any more than 2 1/2 hours."

I gasped. I panicked. Dang it, dang it, dang it. Why did I ask her. I knew what she would say...hmmmm. Yes, I did know what she would say...But...What had I just done??? "But...but" I stammered "I haven't run anything over 16 miles in 6 weeks. I have to..."

She smiled, gently, knowingly, and said again "No more then 2 1/2 hours".

"But...", feeling a little desperate, grasping for some hope, "...I may run it fast, right??".

Again, her smile, "Nope. I want you to run a smell-the-roses pace." she replied in a bit of a sing-song tone.
Arggg. I pleaded, I groveled a bit, I bargained...to no avail. I really had no leg to stand on and I knew it.

The next day I ran a slightly too fast 17.3 miles in 2:34 - about as close as I could get to what I'd been asked to do. And then another taper began.

And when I lined up at the start in Tucson, I had not run anything over 17 miles since Oct 6th in Chicago. I thought this would be a problem, mentally, for me. But as the gun went off and we made our way down Mt. Lemmon and through the desert, that thought never entered my mind.

And I have never felt so good, so strong, so solid, so in charge, while running a marathon. By mile 20 I felt shockingly good, and my last 6 miles were the fastest I've ever run during a marathon.

I was sold...But still, I have a skeptical nature...So I need more.

After that, I told Lorraine that I wanted to make myself a guinea pig of sorts, and use the Running Wizard program for my Boston training. Running Wizard is the fairly personalized running program offered through the Lydiard Foundation for anyone racing distances from 1500 meters through marathons. Now, this is tough for me, because as a coach myself, I have a hard time buying into any sort of "cookie-cutter" plan. But I wanted to do it mostly to learn more about the principles (first hand and applied to myself) involved with a purely Lydiard based program. And so, after an insufficient downtime following Tucson, I embarked on my Running Wizard program.

3 comments:

Congrats on finding running-wizard. I used it for a recent half and took a healthy 9.5 minutes off my PR. I too was a little nervous about the approach but I found that the plan had a flow that was missing from my training before. Do post more about your progress as I plan to use RW for a full in the fall and am curious how it works out for you.

I'll have to look into their wizard. I recently ran the Disney World Marathon with the longest run in 8 weeks being 8 miles. I was recovering from an IT band issue after running my first 50 miler. I was worried, but I had no IT issues, and ran the race without problems. Granted, it was Disney so there were frequent photo stops, but still. I think people over estimate their bodies ability to retain endurance.

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About Me

I've been running since I was 8 years old, and several decades later, I'm still at it. I am an IAAF L5/USATF L3 Endurance, USATF L2 Endurance/Speed/Hurdles/Relays, RRCA, and Lydiard Certified running coach, a runner, a mother, a climber, and a philosopher (as in, I like to think about and examine questions that are difficult, if not impossible, to answer). These are the five attributes that I believe best sum up the central aspects of my life.